Lost Deers in Hunting Season
by throughcrimsonstars
Summary: After a picnic gone terribly wrong, the Doctor and Clara find themselves kidnapped and separated in a castle by an evil, but incredibly powerful lord known as The Marquis. Unable to communicate, and not knowing whether the other is even still alive, it's up to the both of them to find a way out, while facing unexpected perils and the dark secret behind The Marquis' power.
1. Chapter 1

"What do you think of this place?"

Clara stood on her tiptoes to have a proper look of the image showed on the TARDIS monitor. Her lips curled into a warm smile.

"It seems like a perfect spot to have a picnic."

The Doctor gave a sigh of relief. He had shown her a few other places, but until then none of them had seemed good enough for her. One was too cold, one was too warm, another one had too many insects and ants, and the last one hadn't been beautiful enough.

He couldn't believe he hadn't remembered of that place right away. He hadn't thought about it for a long time, probably because he hadn't been there for a very long time, but he had a wonderful memory of it.

He landed the TARDIS with its usual hissing, whining, sound. He opened the doors with a snap if his fingers for Clara, who had both her hands busy with a big picnic basket.

They stepped out into the sunlight and found themselves standing on a wide field, entirely covered with extremely colorful flowers. Quite near to where they had landed, the field stopped at the edge of a forest, but other than that it spread as far as they could see.

"This is beautiful, Doctor," Clara sighed, happily.

"It sure is," he agreed.

They made their way towards the forest, until Clara decided to stop, a few hundred feet away from their time machine. She dropped the basket and then rummaged in it for a sheet which she then sprawled on the ground. She smoothed the angles meticulously and eventually straightened to checked whether she had done a good job. Satisfied, Clara opened the basket and started pulling out stuff: sandwiches, a salad, apples, a bottle of water...

She stopped to cover a big yawn with her hand. She suddenly felt _so_ tired. She should have known, this had been the first time she had managed to stop, after a couple of frantic months divided between school and adventures. She was determined to take advantage of that day to relax as well as she could.

The Doctor stood beside her as she prepared everything for their picnic, his hands hidden deeply in his pockets. A sudden realization dawned on him.

"I forgot my screwdriver in the TARDIS," he exclaimed, making her almost jump by surprise.

"Go on and get in then, "she said, drowning any further possible remark in another big yawn.

"I don't need you to tell me that, thank you very much," he complained angrily. Why did she always feel the need to boss him around? He turned around and marched towards his time machine, before she could have the chance to answer back. She watched him storm away, with her mouth opened as if ready to speak, but nothing came out, so she sealed her lips into a straight line. Soon enough, though, she smiled and chuckled quietly at the thought of the Doctor's reaction.

She rubbed her eyes and then stretched her arms tiredly. She was starting to feel her eyelids heavy and realized how hard it was to keep her eyes opened.

"Maybe I'll lie down for just a second, until the Doctor comes back," she said to herself.

She hardly finished that thought, when her strength abandoned her. Her legs stopped supporting her and she was hardly able to arrest her fall by stretching out her arms and pressing her hands to the ground. She knew that something was wrong, but she was also aware that she wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

Her arms deceived her and she crumbled definitively on the grass.

The powerfully colored flowers were the last thing she saw through her misty gaze before everything turned black and she lost consciousness.

In the meanwhile the Doctor paced the console room, searching for his missing screwdriver.

"Where did I leave you..." he whispered to himself, before spotting it abandoned on his armchair. He grabbed it and then made for her door, addressing Clara even before he was outside the TARDIS.

"Clara, some idiot left my-" but the rest of the words were lost at the tip of his tongue, when he saw the two men where he was expecting Clara to be, waiting for him to get their picnic started.

Instead, his companion was clearly unconscious and carried by whom he could only assume was some sort of knight, by the metal armor which covered his whole body, while his partner guarded the area around them.

The Doctor stared horrified at the scene which met his eyes, momentarily unable to move, his entire body paralyzed. But a second later he was already running toward his friend.

"_Clara_," he yelled.

"_Clara_," he repeated, desperately.

The two knights turned abruptly in the direction of his screams.

"Let her go," he shouted, as if hoping that throwing them commands would somehow stop them.

"_Clara_!"  
>The one who wasn't holding the girl, without further hesitation, pointed his arm towards him. He realized too late what was going to happen. He stopped running and tried to duck, but the dart which was shot from the knight's weapon stung painfully the left side of his neck.<p>

He grunted in frustration, still trying to focus on Clara, as he fell to the ground and passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

Clara woke up with a start. She immediately opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was the darkness. She felt lost and confused. She had no idea of where she was or why she was there. What had happened? How did she get...where ever that place was?

She was having some difficulty remembering anything at all. Her memory was as black as her surroundings and her head was aching painfully, making it hard for her to think straight.

She took a couple of deep and slow breaths.

It was important to try and focus. The best thing was to start by listing the little she knew for certain.

Her name was Clara Oswald. She was an English teacher from Blackpool, planet Earth. She was a time traveller.

"Doctor!" The name came out in a feeble whisper, hardly strong enough to make it our of her throat.

The memory of the Time Lord made her stand up so quickly, her head throbbed and she felt an unexpected twinge hit her like a dagger. Her hands reached to cover her face and muffle an inevitable moan. She waited for the pain to leave her before continuing to analyse her situation. What else did she know? She had been lying on what she assumed was a bed. A comfortable bed for that matter, but it probably wasn't relevant to her in that precise moment.

"Every little counts," she thought to herself.

She hadn't noticed the presence of a window, but when she had gotten used to the darkness it helped her have a general idea of where she was.

For starters, it wasn't any place she could recognize. It was a large, circular room. Many beds were arranged along the wall, like numbers on a clock. She couldn't see properly, but there seemed to be people sleeping in them. This realization made her shiver. She was really starting to feel scared, now. She hugged herself, using her arms as a protection more psychological then physical.

It was then she noticed that someone had changed her clothes. She was wearing a white nightgown. She inadvertently blushed at the thought. How did she manage to sleep through all that? The only explanation she could think of was that she must have been drugged, somehow.

More and more details were coming back to her. She was going to have a picnic with the Doctor, but then she had started feeling incredibly tired. The Doctor had gone inside the TARDIS and she had lost consciousness. She couldn't remember anything else.

"The flowers," she realized.

The flowers must have been tampered with. They must have used them to put her to sleep and kidnap her.

The Doctor would know what to do. She sighed. She felt incredibly alone, but she also knew she couldn't give up already.

Clara slid carefully off the bed. Her bear feet touched the cold, stone floor. She thanked her legs for supporting her. They were aching and wobbled dangerously, but they still allowed her to move.

She took a few steps and reached for the bed next to hers, before starting to shake its owner. She needed to wake him, or her, up, to gain some information.

The figure in the bed shifted under the blankets and she realized it was a girl. She opened her eyes and Clara saw them immediately filling with utmost fear. She raised slightly on her elbows and, at the same time, shifted away from Clara. This way Clara could have a better view of her. She was wearing her same nightgown and had some really beautiful, long, black hair. She was very young, Clara noticed. Twenty, at most.

She touched her gently on her wrist. This gesture made the girl try to retrieve even further back. She could hear her breathing become progressively more ragged.

"Don't be afraid," Clara whispered, giving her a warm smile and trying to sooth her. "I'm not here to hurt you. I just need to ask you a few questions."

The girl didn't say anything and looked at her suspiciously. She felt her scrutinizing gaze travelling her entire body. Clara's small figure and the fact that they were wearing the same outfit probably reassured her in some way, because she stood up and turned to sit at the edge of the bed, facing Clara, who took a small step back and straightened up slightly. She waited for the girl to say something, but nothing came out of her mouth. She just remained perfectly still, looking up at her. She was probably waiting for her questions.

Clara started feeling uncomfortable under her piercing gaze, so she took some other steps away from the girl's bed and sat down on her own, without looking away and hardly blinking.

She rubbed her arms with her hands, uncertain what to ask first. There was too much she didn't know and she had the feeling that she had to be careful with what she asked. Before she could make up her mind, the girl surprised her by deciding to speak.

"You're the new one, then," she stated, in a low voice.

Clara didn't know what that meant, so she didn't have the means to contradict her. "I – I suppose so," she shrugged. "I don't know. It depends on what you mean by _new one_. New to what?"

This particular question seemed to make her uncomfortable, because she shifted in her spot. "They probably took you in while were all sleeping," she said, without answering directly.

"Who's we? Where am I? Why am I here?"

As her impatience grew, her voice got louder. She heard movements in the other beds, but she ignored them.

"Take a wild guess," the girl replied, still in a scared whisper, even though Clara could tell the sarcasm in her voice. It took her by surprise. "Where do you think we are?"

Clara took another look around the room, her eyes examining the stone walls and the high sealing. "It seems like a tower of a castle," she said, not entirely seriously. It was the feeling she had, but it didn't seem so plausible. The girl frowned and looked as though she had said something highly offensive and wasn't sure if Clara was entirely sane. She felt embarrassed, even though she didn't know why.

"You know where you are, right?" She sounded sincerely surprised.

"Not in the slightest," she said, almost apologetically.

"You're kidding," another soft voice said. "You can't be serious."

Clara had been so anxious to know what had happened to her, she hadn't notice that someone else had risen from his bed. It was another girl, wearing the same night dress they did.

Clara's heart ached.

This girl, who was timidly approaching their beds, was even younger then the first one. Clara calculated that she must have been sixteen years old. Just like some of her students.

She examined her attentively as she sat down next to the first girl with her big eyes and her thin eyebrows raised high on her forehead. She was small, probably a bit smaller than Clara, and had curly, blond hair, which stopped an inch over her shoulders, as far as she could tell from the dim light coming from the only window.

"Look," Clara addressed them both, gently. "I've never been to this planet before. I arrived this morning with my friend and his space machine and here I am now."

The two girls shared looks. All that disbelief was starting to bother Clara. In the meanwhile, another couple of girls had joined their little group. The oldest had probably Clara's age and the other one must have had more or less the same of the blond girl. They both looked tired and didn't say a word, even though Clara raised her hand tentatively to welcome them.

The girl she had woken up was starting to gain confidence, loosing some of her uncertainty as she addressed Clara. "This is the Castle. The Marquis owns it."

Everybody exchanged a knowing look and one of them nodded solemnly. On the other hand, Clara looked confused. "Who is this marquis?"

"He is only known by this title. Everybody calls him like that and nobody knows what his real name is."

"This sounds vaguely familiar," she muttered, ironically, thinking about the Doctor.

There was a moment of silence, as she watched all the beds empty, one after the other. Now that she could see every person in that room without the obstacle of their bed covers, Clara saw they were all girls. Some remained sitting on their beds, probably too frightened to move, but most of them formed a circle around Clara and a couple of them even sat down on either side of her. She couldn't help but noticing that they were all young and extremely pretty.

They were all looking at her, making her blush, so she addressed the girl with the long, dark hair, to address them all.

"Please, do go on," she told her, gently.

The room had fallen into silence, before it was broken by the girl to continue with her explanation. "The Marquis is a very powerful Lord. He is very rich and very powerful. He has been ruling our world for many years, now."

"So, is he some sort of king?" Clara interrupted her.

"No, there is a king," she clarified. "The king is a good man, but he's being controlled by the Marquis."

"He might be good, but he seems to be quite weak, this king of yours," Clara commented, to ease the tension.

This remark started some agitated whispers amongst the girls and some of them seemed to glare at her.

"Don't you dare saying something like this, ever!" the blond girl hissed.

She looked both cross and very determined, making her more menacing than her size should have allowed. She supposed that she must make the same effect to the Doctor, when she wanted to. No wonder he usually followed her orders.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't-"

"Yeah, never mind," the first girl dismissed her, without spearing her a glare. "You couldn't know."

"What couldn't I know?" she asked, wondering why these girls were acting so mysterious.

"The Marquis managed to gain all his power by kidnapping the king's only daughter. He blackmailed him, threatening to kill her in exchange for what he wanted," and then she gave what Clara considered a dramatic pause.

"What did he want?" she insisted.

Before the girl could reply, the door burst open. It happened so suddenly, Clara jumped and her heart started beating very fast. All of the girls screamed and ran as fast they could back to their own beds.

She wasn't as quick. The fright paralyzed her so she remained in her sitting position as a figure emerged from the light coming from outside the room, that momentarily blinded her eyes.

"Security," she heard a low voice saying, and it took a while for her to realize it was the answer to her question.

When her eyes got accustomed once again to the change of light, she could eventually see the owner of that voice.

A very tall man was silhouetted in front of her. He had dark hair and a dark beard and very dark eyes. She thought he could have been an handsome man, if it weren't for his expression, which made him just menacing instead.

The look he was giving her was hard and made her forget how to breath. It was enough to inject fear in her veins as poison. She felt small, as if his mere presence had shrunken her.

"You're new here, so I will forgive you for your impertinence," the man continued coldly, with an apparent calmness that scared her all the more.

"Tomorrow it will be explained to you what your duties are and what it is expect from you, so, after that, I will pretend that you do what you are told. Have I made myself clear?"

Normally Clara would have protested, she would have stood up and told the man in front of him that she would not allow anyone to treat her that way, but she had the feeling that this wasn't no ordinary situation, so she just nodded in response to his question.

He smiled, but it was a cold, emotionless smile, which made her even more frightened. "I'm not a merciful man, as you will learn. I don't Give many second chances. Now go to sleep," he ordered.

Clara watched him turn on his heels and slam the door behind him.

Her heart still beating at an alarming speed, she crawled back into bed.


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor felt the panic before he could remember what was causing it. He opened his eyes and saw an unfamiliar, filthy floor. His head hurt and he could feel a sting on the left side of his neck.

Finally, it all came back to him. The memory hit him painfully, and he immediately tried to put himself into a sitting position.

"Clara," he croaked.

"Clara!" he managed to yell.

A hand soon covered his mouth. He didn't expected it to happen and he tried to rebel against the tight grasp that had come out of nowhere, but the more he raised his voice, the harder the hand pressed against his skin and muffled the noise he was making.

"Keep quiet, _moron_" a voice hissed in the darkness.

The doctor sopped moving and didn't make any further noise, other than the furious beating of his hearts he could clearly feel inside his chest. The hand retrieved from his mouth and he looked up at the man crouching in front of him, now that his eyes had gotten used to the dim light coming from a few, very sporadic, candles. He could see that it was a tall middle-aged man, with dark,long, hair. The first impression he had was that he looked sick. He had deep eye bags and he was unnaturally pale.

"Where am I? Where is Clara" he asked, harshly, but keeping his voice down to a low tone.

The man, probably deciding that the Doctor had calmed down a little, took a step away from him and sat down, resting his back against the wall.

"You really can't imagine where you are?" the man asked, almost smirking. "And as for your lady friend, I'm afraid that there haven't been women here for many years."

The doctor gaped at him.

"She's not my-" but he trailed off, distracted by his surroundings.

He hadn't noticed until that moment that many other people – all of them men - where distributed along the walls, just like him and his new friend.

"Really? It didn't seem like it. Not many people wake up in here and still manage to think of anyone else other than themselves," the man laughed.

The doctor ignored his comment and he started looking around, searching for clues for where he might be. And if there was a way out.

It was a long, rectangular chamber with a low ceiling and no windows. The Doctor had a different body temperature than human beings, so he had a different tolerance than them regarding the weather, but he knew perfectly well that it was freezing in there. He didn't need to be a hyper-intellingent, two-thousand years old alien to figure that out. Seeing those trembling bodies all around him was more than enough.

He licked his forefinger and used it to analyse the air. He thought for a few seconds, before turning back to address his neighbour: "We're underground. This must be the dungeons of some old building."

The man raised an eyebrow, amused. "You don't say."

He looked at him, outraged. "Feel free to join in any time soon," he snapped, angrily.

"Oh, I'm perfectly aware of what this place is, thank you."

The doctor could see his amusement raising and he wasn't able to explain the meaning of it. Before he could say anything, the man added, expectantly: "You're not from our world, are you?"

The doctor gaped at him, horror-struck. "How did you know?"

His neighbor laughed again, obviously trying hard to keep the volume of his amusement as low as possible at the same time.

"It doesn't take a genius, really," he explained to him. "It's the only way to justify why you don't know where you are. There is only one possibility, when people get kidnapped, over here."

The doctor frowned disapprovingly at the man's smile. If it weren't for the room he was seemingly locked in and for the general condition of their surroundings, he would have assumed he was being made fun of.

He didn't say anything right away, trying to figure out in what kind of situation he was in and what he could do about it.

But, truth was, he was lost in his sheer ignorance. He usually enjoyed not knowing, because it had become something of a rarity after more than who thousand years of time and space.

He didn't find it very enjoyable now. Not with Clara missing. God knows what could have happened to her. He felt the panic increasing again, creating an annoying lurch at the pit of his stomach.

"Fine, you got me. I had just arrived to this planet with my time machine," he explained, speaking fast to get it out of the way. "My friend and I, we had this picnic planned-"

The words got stuck in his throat. It was hard for him to believe that not so long ago he was with Clara and the worst concern in their minds was whether her sandwiches were going to be edible or not.

The man seemed to read his mind, because he was looking sadly at him and he said: "It's OK," even though both of them knew it wasn't OK at all.

"Please, tell me all you know," the Doctor urged, trying to focus on something else other than his friend.

The man gave him a sympathetic smile. "It's the Marquis's castle. He's been ruling this planet ever since he kidnapped the King's daughter. That gave him the control of all the technology so basically he can do what he wants."

"He seems charming," the doctor mattered. "How does he manage to control all the technology? What does this mean?"

"For once, he made sure no one else other than him could use it. It made us go back to medieval times," he frowned, probably lost in the memory of better days. "Then, he used it to build powerful weapons to control the people and huge defenses around him and his castle. He can have all the slaves he wants."

The man sighed and they both remained silent. The doctor had millions of thoughts racing through his mind.

He was about to ask one of the many questions which were lining at the tip of his tongue, but all of the sudden the lights went out.

There was a loud banging at the door.

"Go to sleep. You know what happens if I catch any of you still awake and speaking to each other."

The harsh, yet slightly mocking voice, echoed against the cold walls.

A mortal silence fell, interrupted only by the sound of steps leaving.

The Doctor leaned towards the man beside him, who was lying down, as if the conversation were over. He wouldn't allow that.

"He's gone. Keep talking," he urged, impatiently.

The man turned to glare at him. "Didn't you hear what he said?" he whispered "He's not kidding, you know? The last time he caught someone disobeying his orders it didn't end well for anybody. He has broken ribs for much less. So here's a word of advice, and you'll better follow it if you want to survive in this place - _shut up_."

The way he turned his back on him, after uttering those words, made it clear to the Doctor that the discussion was ultimately over.

Speechless, he rolled over on his back and, with his eyes still wide open, he didn't even try to sleep.


End file.
